The radical theologian and rebel Thomas Müntzer is put to death. Müntzer supported the Anabaptist dissidents against the Catholic Church and against the more socially conservative strains of the Protestant Reformation. When peasants rebel against their feudal oppressors in the German Peasants Revolt of 1524-1525, Müntzer takes their side and becomes one of their leaders.
Müntzer is taken prisoner during the Massacre of Frankenhausen, when between 3,000 and 10,000 peasants are slaughtered. He is tortured and then put to death.

The Hambacher Fest – a German national democratic festival-disguised as a non-political county fair – is celebrated at Hambach Castle in present-day Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is one of the main manifestations for German unity, freedom and democracy during the Vormärz era.

Birth of Dashiel Hammett (1894-1961), author and political activist. The author of hard-boiled detective novels, including The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and Red Harvest, Hammett was also a member of the Communist Party and a civil rights activist. In 1951, he is imprisoned for refusing to name names of Communist sympathizers.

May 27 - 28, 1905

The Battle of Tsushima: Japanese navy sinks two-thirds of the Russian fleet. The defeat is a severe blow to the prestige of the Russian Empire and marks the first defeat of a European power by an Asian power in the modern age.

Birth of Rachel Carson (1907-1964), biologist, environmentalist, author. Carson is best known for her 1962 book Silent Spring, which alerts the general public to the dangers posed by indiscriminate spraying of pesticides.

A widespread mutiny breaks out among French army troops serving on the Western Front in the Great War (World War I). On May 27, some 30,000 soldiers leave the front line. The soldiers believe, rightly, that their lives are being squandered in futile offensives ordered by incompetent commanders safely in the rear who are indifferent to the casualties suffered by soldiers at the front. The mutiny spreads in the following days. It is estimated that half of the French infantry takes part in the mutinies. However, the mutinous soldiers fail to organize themselves to resist the inevitable retaliation by the army command. Consequently, the French high command is able to reassert control after June 8, using still-obedient troops to quell the mutiny. Eventually 23,385 men are convicted of mutiny. 554 men are sentenced to death.